README file for "Information Transmission in Groups: Peer Influence in High-stakes, Irreversible Financial Decisions" by Tom Ahn, Jesse Cunha, and Patrick Veith

1. Data

We use personnel data (of now-retired) sailors and officers from the U.S. Navy. The data was provided by the Navy Personnel Command containing monthly snapshots of active duty sailors and officers in the U.S. Navy from January 2002 to November 2019.

We will not be able to provide the raw data directly because we are not the owners of the data. We were granted an exemption from posting the data in the archive by the editors.

The data can be accessed by requesting it via a webform at the Defense Manpower Data Center after approval from the Department of Defense. ( https://dwp.dmdc.osd.mil/dwp/app/dod-data-reports/data-requests)

In addition. we use anonymous survey data of sailors and officers. This data approved for use bythe Office of People Analytics (OPA). The data can be remotely accessed, after signing a MOU, via the Army's Person-Event Data Environment (PDE). (https://pde.army.mil/)

2. Software

Stata was used to create all summary stats and regressions in the paper. We used StataMP version 16.0, with the following add-on .ado (function) files:

reghdfe
 
3. Code

We used Stata in cleaning and analyzing our datasets.
Two Stata .do files are included in the data archive:
	1. ReStat_retirement_peer_effects.do : our main analysis file that takes the raw personnel data from Navy Personnel Command and creates Tables 1 - 5 in the paper, and Appendix Figures D.1 - D.5 and Appendix Tables D.1 - D.6 in the online appendix.
	2. redux_survey_FINAL.do: our supplementary analysis file that takes the survey data from OPA and creates Appendix Tables D.7 - D.9 in the online appendix.
	
4. Data Dictionary

Please see included file: data_dictionary_ahncunhaveith.xlsx